


you reel me out, you pull me in

by 127AM (hotmess_ex_press)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Forbidden Love, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Actually Unrequited Love, all set during promotions, kinda?? it's more than that but idk idk, set in a bds 2.0 era! ten teased it for nct 2020 let's all manifest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26709886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotmess_ex_press/pseuds/127AM
Summary: "Just us." Ten catches Taeyong's jaw, touch twining around Taeyong's neck like a chain of velvet. He smiles slowly, so achingly beautiful as he leans in. There's a brush, a breath at the corner of Taeyong's lips, and he's already dissolving. "It'll be just us."Quivering in a way it hasn't in so long, Taeyong's heart blooms like a red rose, already rotting from within.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten
Comments: 22
Kudos: 72





	you reel me out, you pull me in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silent_bunny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silent_bunny/gifts).



> for you, eni <3

_Tell us about this song's concept._

"It's...romantic," Ten says, grin sharp as glass but eyes sharp as steel when he glances Taeyong's way. Taeyong feels his throat tighten, his blood throbbing in time to the tap of Ten's slender fingers against his mic. "It's a song about that rush of first love. It's a very overwhelming feeling, so we tried to portray that sense of awe in our dancing."

Ten's fingernails are a glossy black, to match the shining ribbon at his throat, to cut like night against the golden sheen of his skin when his fingertips crawl up his neck and sweep over his rosebud lips. Taeyong knows the devastation of those fingernails, can still feel their cruelly enchanting kiss deep in the sore muscles of his thighs: burning crescent moons when he sits too still.

"Romantic," Ten repeats with a nod as the audience titters. He gestures towards Taeyong, a flash of slim wrist revealed in a rustle of silk. "Anything to add, Taeyong?"

Taeyong smiles shakily, clears his throat. Lights pool in his eyes. Blood still tingling with adrenaline and Ten's gaze on him too heavy and scalding, he can't help the stammer that rests on the tip of his tongue. "I agree. It's a very powerful feeling--I hope we've communicated it well."

The fans coo, Ten grins indulgently, and they're swept backstage again.

In the van, Taeyong tilts his head against the window and pretends to sleep.

Really, he's watching Ten--the gentle slope of his profile as he glances down at his phone, the makeup smeared beneath his eyes.

Onstage, Taeyong is a knife: calculated, lethal and untouchable. But once the glitter is wiped away, the wires untangled, Ten is the one with all the sharpness. Taeyong could reach across the seats, take his hand and kiss the palm, but the fear of Ten's fingertips sliding away--knuckles slicing into Taeyong's paperthin flesh--keeps Taeyong's hands folded neatly in his lap.

Ten looks up from his phone, and Taeyong quickly closes his eyes. He grips the cuffs of his sweatshirt too tightly, wishing Ten would soften, reach out first like he always does.

This time, Ten goes back to his phone, white light swelling across his silhouette. _Next time_ , Taeyong promises himself, _next time I'll be brave_.

"Taeyong," Ten crows when they hear the news: _Taeyong and Ten reunited, the fan favorites, the pretty boys._ "Aren't you excited? It'll be just us again."

"Just us..."

Ten catches Taeyong's jaw, touch twining around Taeyong's neck like a chain of velvet. He smiles slow, so pretty as he leans in. " _Just us_."

A brush, a breath against the corner of Taeyong's lips. Dark eyes glinting with sin, slicker than moonlight, when he pulls away. Quivering in a way it hasn't in so long, Taeyong's heart blooms like a red rose, already rotting from within.

Taeyong leaves so many words unsaid.

The song is dropping in two weeks and Taeyong is dizzy, reeling between schedules but still finding himself in the studio at the time Ten texted, not a second to spare.

"You're here," Ten exhales with a smile, shoulders already glossed with sweat. He pushes away from the mirror and glides over, grasping Taeyong's hand. Taeyong lets himself be pulled, straps of his bag dripping away from his fingertips. "Let's get started."

Ten rewinds the song, and Taeyong's eyelids slip closed for a moment, drinking in Ten's opening vocals: midnight-rich, faintly distorted through the speakers but still so sweet. Elusive as tendrils of ebbing starlight, intoxicating as the jewel-bright blood of a pomegranate. Ten's voice seeps into his veins and he sways where he stands, moving with a drunken grace.

Suddenly, Ten is in front of him, scent of vetiver and night jasmine swirling too close, draping Taeyong's hand over his shoulder and leading him to the center of the room in a mockery of a waltz. He spins Taeyong once and dances away, hips rocking to the rhythm of Taeyong's rapping as he tosses a teasing glance over his shoulder.

Taeyong huffs a laugh, shaking his head even as his gaze clings to every snap and undulation of Ten's wicked body, the roll of his neck and the way his shirt snags on his ribs.

The chorus floods the studio, song broken by a sultry whisper and stolen on a slick beat drop, and they begin to dance in earnest.

Taeyong adores the choreography, though he'd never say it: the subtle sensuality of it, the gentle give and take. A movement mirrored, a wrist ensnared and reluctantly released, a wave of movement passed between them like smoke.

Taeyong opens his soul to the music, opens his arteries to Ten. They dance as one, shared bones and shared breath and hearts like magnets, always edging a little closer.

Ten sings along to the bridge, harmonizing with himself. His voice rasps with four a.m. fatigue, pouring like shadow from his lips. Hand curling at Taeyong's nape, lingering perhaps a heartbeat longer than the choreographer intended, he doesn't break eye contact as his fingernails slide into Taeyong's hair. Careful, swift knife-tips, scraping so merciful.

Hypnotized by the inky supernovas of Ten's stare, Taeyong stumbles over his footwork; Ten sweeps forward, tangling him in a kiss before he can remember himself. His grip tightens in Taeyong's hair and his mouth burns like sugar and cyanide, molten silver and pomegranate wine. His tongue curls into Taeyong's just so, and Taeyong's knees go weak, pulling them both to the floor.

The song fades out, and Ten's knees slip to either side of Taeyong's hips. He presses in again and again, wild and beautiful like he can taste the starvation on Taeyong's lips. Silence prickles in the room like desperation, cleaved by Taeyong's wretched groans. Ten cups his face with a tenderness that's lethal, brutal and delicious, and doesn't stop kissing him for a second.

Later, Taeyong breathes heavy into the cruel crest of Ten's collarbone, flushed and spinning in and out of reality, sick with lust. Ten's weight has melded into him, crushed him to the wood floor, but he doesn't mind, won't ever mind.

"I thought we might get rusty," Taeyong murmurs. Fingertips stilling on their pattern through Taeyong's gritty hair, Ten hums.

It's been months since they were last alone together, even longer since they were last alone like _this_. Time never matters to Ten, but too many lonely weeks make Taeyong's teeth ache, hollow out his bones.

"I'll never forget how to want you," Ten responds at last, and twists down again, to prove his point.

_I need this, I need this,_ Taeyong wants to plead, wants to demand every time Ten steals a kiss between moments. _I need love, I need more._

He wants to tease Ten's heart from its hidden crevice between ribs, wants to drink it right from his tongue, coax it out with fingers slipped beneath his shirt and spiraled, splayed worshipping across his chest.

He wants to beg, buried in the crook of Ten's jaw. _Please, I need your_ love.

But then his members come crashing in, the cameras turn on, a manager slips into the driver's seat. Ten flashes a private smile, back of his hand hovering above Taeyong's thigh, and moves away.

Every time, Taeyong smiles back. Every time, the corners of his mouth grow a little heavier.

Rain beads on the window, sharpened jewels against the lace of steam that weaves itself out of Taeyong's wistful exhale. The streets gleam with shimmering rain, kissed iridescent by dawn's rosy longing.

Taeyong is so tired he's sick, a tired that sends his marrow dissolving into his veins, crumbling beneath the cavernous pressure of his bones.

They arrived at the hotel late last night, city flashing and screaming with electricity outside of the tinted windows of the van. In the timid sheen of morning, the streets unfurl like leaves, echoing with tender footsteps and warbling laughter. The city ripens into something pale and dulcet, almost in apology of its neon brashness, its tumbling hunger, the night before.

Taeyong shivers, already stretched into his outfit for today's schedules. He's sick, from the back of his throat to the jagged angle of his spine. He can feel it trickling down each vertebrae. His lungs are stiff, rusted over with the same verses over and over, barely lurching with each breath. His chest aches something cruel, too many universes compacted into a pinprick between his ribs, too much love left to spoil, unspoken, in its web of bone.

He knows the cure, it rests like syrup stretched between Ten's palms.

If he could only slash away the leather and lace of this era, fall back into the bed and be consumed, wearing Ten's arms and a necklace of kisses, richer than a king. The remedy lies in another hour of midnight, in crystals of lush wine and cascading down the column of Ten's throat. He could steal Ten away from it all, disappear into the glittering curtains of rain where they would dance like birds to a melody of Ten's laughter, free as they haven't been in years.

Taeyong would cry forever, drowning in time, drowning in reverence, wondering which would run dry first and never finding the answer. He would catalogue memories on his tongue, each one tracing back to looping waltzes and rainy starlight-kisses.

They would disintegrate into cloud satin, drifting and spinning through this new paradox of a city. Taeyong would be healed and Ten would finally say, _I've been waiting so long, my heart, my love--_

Taeyong's phone alarm chimes, severing his mind in two. He draws himself back into reality, blinking out at the rain.

He slumps, sighs.

Behind him, his alarm slides into silence. Warm steam kisses the back of his neck, dizzying with perfume and silk, followed by a lazy hand at his hip. Fingers slip against the divot of his hipbone before falling away, arms locking around his waist.

Taeyong tilts back, falling into the indulgence of Ten's shoulders. Lips sting at the corner of his jaw.

"What's on your mind?" Ten whispers.

_I'm thinking about that twinge in my chest, how empty another day of this will be. I'm thinking about melting into you forever, ebbing away together, so far away. Let's run. Let's float off and maybe you'll let me hear that bittersweet word, so poisonous rolling off of your teeth, precious even if it's a lie, love._

Taeyong twists in Ten's embrace, letting himself steep in the glow of Ten's shower-flushed skin, bitten a delicate peach.

"I'm thinking about the car that'll be here in ten minutes." Taeyong's mouth tears into a plastic grin, aching and pristine. Ten laughs, and the rain starts to slow.

_My love, my heart._

"Go get ready," Taeyong orders, even as he lifts Ten's hands and kisses pearls of rosewater from each fingertip before he can wrench himself away. "I'll meet you downstairs."

Promoting with Ten is a haze, a smudge of vetiver and deep purple. Taeyong wavers between stages mad with inspiration, his joints singing of it, his fingers burning with it. When he's not carving shadowy kisses from Ten's ever-gracious mouth or leading Ten's touch to where it hurts, sweet and sharp like crescent moons, he's gazing with eyes clouded by longing and made scarce by secrets, too-cautious from the risk of it all; he's scratching fevered lyrics into a notebook he clutches to his chest whenever a staff member strays too close. Poetry overflows from his notebook, bleeding across napkins, scrawled onto his skin wherever his leather gloves, his gauze-engulfed sleeves, conceal.

"You're my muse," Taeyong confesses on a whim, an interim moment, caught by the liminal space of the empty waiting room. "All my truest lyrics are for you."

Ten laughs from his throne, folded over Taeyong's thighs. He's otherworldly, beauty and ichor weaving through his veins. Taeyong would sing his throat raw and rotting for him, dance into insanity and across the milky way. _Everything, everything worthwhile is all for you_ , he wants to say, _and everything you ask for_. But Ten tips into him, makes a feast of the words, devours them right from the slant of his lips. Taeyong brushes the seams of his shirt away, pushing into Ten like all his love runs through the channels of his palms and Ten could _feel_ it if Taeyong only grips his waist hard enough, presses close enough.

Their ribs slide together, one more jolt of Taeyong's heart all it would take to fuse them into one, bones collapsing into the other's gaps, starlight flooding between them.

All Taeyong wants is a drop, a taste of that silver ichor, but Ten is rolling off of him, gracefully crossing his legs as he slips onto the floor and the waiting room door is rattling open, staff chattering loudly on the other side of its frosty glass, too close and too soon, and all Taeyong is left with is a chasm in his heart and more words that will never meet a melody and a shadow of lip gloss, snared on the downturn of his mouth.

During every interview, Ten rubs Taeyong's thigh and grasps his shoulder when he laughs, eyes snarled with tenderness. Taeyong grins nervously, gaze ricocheting between the camera and Ten.

Taeyong wonders how much of Ten's affection is hollow, teased to glossy, tantalizing perfection for the cameras. If even the scraps of adoration and currents of want he pours into Taeyong off-camera, after the interviews, in between practices, are imitation. Plastic ways to drum up chemistry, lust designed to flow neatly into the choreography, angled alluringly in every interaction for the world to feast upon, voyeurs to Taeyong's pain.

Taeyong wonders, but he'll never ask.

Just clings to the fantasy the way he clings to Ten's lapel after this promotion period's second-to-last performance. If it's all a lie, shining and desolate, Taeyong doesn't crave it any less.

They get dinner together, just the two of them, and Taeyong eats so slow his noodles go cold in their plastic cup. Ten's foot nudges his ankle. "Let's walk back to the dorms tonight," he suggests, a secret glistening on each syllable, voice bleeding with warmth just for Taeyong.

They walk perilously, lingering under each streetlight and letting their fingers brush, catch, pull away. A private game. Taeyong's cheeks ache with sweetness by the time they get back to his building.

When they reach Taeyong's floor, Ten tugs him back into the elevator, letting the doors groan closed. The metal railing presses against Taeyong's back as Ten gently pushes him against the wall, hand cutting through his hair and settling on the back of his neck. Ten moves like blue flame, tapered and graceful, a little closer. Burning like cut diamond, so much light glinting from his eyes as he carefully observes Taeyong, brow dipping in the center.

"You looked so lost tonight."

Taeyong closes his eyes, head falling back. Ten's gaze a smokescreen behind his eyelids. He trembles when Ten leans in, tattooing a fluttering kiss to the wring of Taeyong's throat. His voice rasps out, lashes out, shattered and yearning. "Just missing you already."

Ten sighs, arms slithering around Taeyong's neck. Taeyong can feel Ten's pulse, a harmony beneath his skin, steady and silver and lovely. He wants to crawl into it, break and splinter among those shimmering veins and make a home for himself in the most secret spiderwebs, the deadliest cracks of Ten's heart. "I know, baby, I'm sorry."

 _Stay. Don't be sorry, stay,_ Taeyong's spine screams, crumpling into itself as he shifts deeper into Ten's embrace, lost in the fractals of cologne still sketched across Ten's skin. _If you know, then stay..._

But Ten's touch is whisper-soft, as he turns Taeyong's face to his for one last star-splashed kiss goodnight, and everything is sweet and easy for another moment.

Ten's smile is blue-tinged when the elevator doors inch closed between them, eyes sparkling a little dimmer, a little kinder, a little more mortal than usual. His slick lips cleave open a fraction, but he's gone before he can say anything. Taeyong feels the loss ringing in the tips of his teeth.

If it's all an act, then Ten is a liar from the tendons of his neck to the gleam of his eyelashes to the peak of every heartbeat.

Their last stage together: glitter and chains flash in Ten's hair, and Taeyong can taste their iron on the back of his tongue. The sheer creases of Ten's shirt yawn around his collarbones, skin dripping with diamonds, shattered glass. The stage lights ravish him, so much glistening sin painted across his cheekbones, the cut of his shoulders. A god of everything unearthly, drops of moonlight the fuel for every blaze of a smile.

Taeyong wants to drop to his knees, pray to the lucky stars tangled in Ten's hair. _My love, my love._

Instead, he gazes at Ten as the audience cheers for them. His beam, his bones, his radiance. He weeps in silence, trembling fingers drawn across his lips.

Ten nudges his chin up as they hurry backstage, and they're out of time but Ten kisses him so unhurried, so thoroughly it chases away the steel and salt on Taeyong's tongue and leaves nothing but dreams, decadent and lingering. His tears freeze over in the wake of Ten's knuckles sweeping up his cheek but his chest still moans. Wondering if they'll have a chance like this again: a backseat, a stage curling over with smoke, a dimmed waiting room sprawled out just for the two of them, luscious as a palace in Taeyong's love-starved-love-drunk eyes. If they'll ever share another song, sultry and meandering; a choreography, a silver pulse crafted so delicate and heartbreaking just for the two of them.

It's late, and they're far from their dorms. Taeyong checks them into a little motel, feels silly fumbling with the key, tears still flecked beneath his eyes. But Ten holds his hand steady, lips gentle as they brush against the tender slivers of teardrops.

Taeyong drowns in the thick white duvet, Ten's spine his lifeline as he runs his palms up the length of it, clinging to every steep ridge. Ten kisses him, wicked wine-sweet mouth, until Taeyong is reeling, fracturing, keening beneath him. Ten's fingertips leave their mark, graceful supernovas swirling across Taeyong's sides, dipping into the rawness of his heartbeat. Burning sugared and leisurely up his thighs.

Taeyong falls forever into the rose-deep, shadowy snare of his want, feverish--seared by the glint and dive of Ten's perfect teeth, the exquisite tilt of his eyelashes as his head falls back, the sweetened coil of his ruby-bleeding lips.

The full moon quivers just outside their window, glorious light striking Ten's shoulder blades, the peak of his lips, with all the worship of a lover.

Taeyong holds Ten's hand in both of his, angling it to gather translucent platinum in every lenient fissure. Then, greedy, he drinks the pearl-fine moonlight from Ten's skin with a kiss to the groove of each finger's base, a kiss to the palm. A kiss to the cold cobalt veins at the knife-edge of Ten's slender wrist, for good measure.

He lets himself be cradled, lets himself drift awhile on the honeyed vetiver of Ten's breath.

Too few hours, too few midnights, too few lifetimes pass before Taeyong is woken by a soft curse at the ridge of his shoulder, Ten rising from the bed. Cold air caresses eagerly where Ten's touch slips away.

Taeyong props himself up against the pillows, watching with still lungs as Ten pulls his shirt on, rakes anxious hands through his hair. Where Taeyong's fingers had woven through with so much reverence, so much care. Taeyong can still feel the texture against his palms, silken like shavings of starlight, when he clenches his fists.

"Where are you going?" he asks, too small, wretched. Ten turns, his usual flame muted.

"I have an event with my members tomorrow," he replies, regret pulled tight between each word. "I should get home."

Not even the trace of a kiss grazed over his knuckles, in suggestion of an apology, can ease the way the Taeyong's chest caves in at the word _home_ , the way his heart tears like shreds of paper on a furious wind at the thought of another empty night. "They could pick you up here," he suggests, knowing in every braid of marrow that it's useless. "You could stay."

Ten sighs, folding Taeyong's hands into his like it's any consolation, any relief. "How would it look, Taeyong?"

"How _should_ it look?" Taeyong pleads carelessly, blood spilling too close to the desperate seam of his mouth. Ten's hands tighten around his in hopeless warning. "We could be in love."

"Taeyong..."

"I could love you," Taeyong whispers on a faltering exhale, on a half-truth. "Damn it all, I could love you in front of everyone, just as well as I do now."

"Don't say that," Ten hisses, but it's subdued by the wavering reflections of the moon, forever trapped and broken in his shining eyes. "This isn't... _can't_ be love. Don't pretend, Taeyong."

He's lying, he's lying and it shows in each thrum of his throat, shows on the sheen of every eyelash. Taeyong's hands slip from his grasp, pale in the light of early early morning, ashen against the white sheets. His tongue is leaden, too tired from the weight of secrets, of love captured and pierced and left to bleed on the cold, unraveled bed of a nameless motel.

He dips his head, silent.

"Sleep, Taeyong," Ten begs, tongue poised like it may knot around something forbidden and cruel-- _my heart, my love_. He snaps his mouth shut before it can.

Taeyong watches him go, trembling. The door slides closed easy, practiced and proper on oiled hinges. The bed smells of Ten, but that's where the echoes of him end--that, and the torment of his crystal lips, twisted around each of Taeyong's thoughts, spiraling forever.

In his dreams, he's brave.

In his dreams, he calls Ten's bluff. His heart, his love stays all night, and he's never lonely again.

For all his reverie, Taeyong is forever the coward.

He's the one flinching away from weighty touches, dangerous whispers displayed in flashes, pretty morsels to the ever-unfurling cameras. He's the one letting Ten steal away into the darkness while he wastes away into morning, bones rolling in on themselves, blistered by the immortality of his devotion. He surrenders a petal of his heart to each of Ten's luminous smiles and would give him _everything_ , but suggest nothing.

The stylists stain his lips like coy peony buds, pink satin for Ten to smear when the world looks away.

A steady palm, warm, folding perfectly around his thigh. Elusive touch, almost accidental as it swirls over, trickles from his forearm. A chin nestled in the dip of his shoulder, skeletons draped together, skin melting like silver over his back. Perfume cloud too close, too close to his throbbing lungs. Ten laughs softly, voice a pale rose, and the world flares, rages, slams into Taeyong with the lust, the longing, the impossibility of an eclipse.

Throat teeming with promises and confessions and wisps of midnight, sweetened to the crest of flooding.

But his tongue, too heavy in his mouth, always too heavy.

Ten throws another glance his way, almost careless but too beautiful, far too beautiful. Eyes glistening with something secret and endlessly lost.

Maybe this is enough, maybe this will keep Taeyong sated to the edge of eternity. Maybe this is as close to love, vein-scalding, drunk, dazzling _love_ , as they can stand to be.

**Author's Note:**

> hope u enjoyed!  
> 


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